Úrsula Corberó has been cast to play the Baroness in Paramount’s G.I. Joe spinoff Snake Eyes.
Corberó is best known as a standout star from the Netflix Spanish-language crime drama Money Heist, which is one of the streaming platform’s hidden gems.
The Baroness isn’t a character that I’m that familiar with.
I don’t recall her being very central in the 1980s comics, and while she was probably more prominent in the cartoon series, I missed that because I was watching Robotech.
What I do know is that she’s kind of an intelligence/espionage type that runs Cobra’s security and spying operations.
She’s also the subject of an ungodly amount of sexed-up cosplay and DeviantArt pieces.
This country’s in deep, deep trouble, buddy.
A Shared Universe Emerges
On a day where we saw the first look at a female 007 and Spider-Man returning to the MCU, this is the most important news for me.
We know what Bond is, we know what the MCU is. Expectations have been created for millions of fans worldwide and those expectations will be met.
On the other hand, we have no idea what Snake Eyes is going to be like.
The same applies to the new Mortal Kombat reboot.
These are all blank slates for the majority of the movie audiences, so these projects can go in any direction the studio wants to take them.
We have no expectations, so we might actually be surprised.
With the casting of the Baroness, who is a huge part of the GI Joe mythology, the vision Paramount Pictures has for Snake Eyes is coming into clearer focus.
The trades have the movie being developed as a GI Joe prequel with Snake Eyes attempting to join the Arashikage ninja clan, an ancient organization that is now comprised of covert operatives, bounty hunters, thieves and contract killers who cover their illegal activity with front corporations.
Introducing the Baroness before the formation of the GI Joe special operations unit means that they are likely going to stick closely to her comic lore in which Anastasia Cisarovna, the daughter of rich aristocrats, is schooled in radicalism early and becomes a committed terrorist long before she ever joins Cobra.
If Paramount can pull this off by keeping the budget reasonably low and committing a good ninja movie first, they have the makings of an actual shared cinematic universe here.
Director Robert Schwentke is kind of a mixed bag: he’s had success with the Fincheresque Flight Plan and the AARP action flick Red but he’s also made a few terrible adaptations like R.I.P.D. and Divergent.
His most recent film The Captain, a WWII drama in his native German, is very bleak and very violent, so he is capable of giving us something grounded and hardcore.
Doubtful that he will be allowed, as Paramount has almost no viable franchises left to spin up merchandise for except GI Joe.
And that’s fine, I’m all about action figures and video games but you have to remember who has the money to spend on your IP, Paramount!
We will certainly know what kind of Snake Eyes movie they are making well before it’s released on Oct. 16, 2020.
The Rest Of The Characters and Cast
So far these are the other characters that have been cast in the Snake Eyes movie:
